Unification Church Dissolution in Japan: An In-Depth Analysis of a Wrong Decision. 5. Violating Religious Liberty
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The verdict tries to claim its decision is compatible with freedom of religion or belief. It is not.
April 9, 2025
In the previous article of this series, I discussed how the Tokyo District Court, when it pronounced the dissolution of the Unification Church on March 25, dealt with the question of the “Compliance Declaration” of 2009, after which the claims for excessive donations decreased almost to zero. As we have seen, the court’s own statistics confirm that this was the case. Yet, the court maintains that, statistics notwithstanding, the Compliance Declaration did not “fundamentally” solve the problems.
This absurd conclusion is based on two arguments. First, the Church has allegedly not been effective in monitoring the effects of the Compliance Declaration. When the Declaration was adopted, the Church vowed to monitor its implementation through a method commonly used by large Japanese corporations called KPI (Key Performance Indicators). When the MEXT asked the Church to prove that KPI-based control had been performed, the Church did submit “tables showing the calculation criteria and aggregate results for KPI.” However, the court finds them not to be complete and argues that nation-wide investigations were not performed. Also, those not respecting the Compliance Declaration were threatened with expulsion but according to the court “there have been no cases of disciplinary action taken for encouraging believers to make donations.”
But perhaps there were no expulsions because there were no serious breaches of the Compliance Declaration. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The court has supplied itself statistics proving that the Compliance Declaration was extremely effective.
The second and decisive argument allowing the court to conclude that, notwithstanding the statistics, after 2009 and even today the Church is still engaged in the illicit solicitation of donations on such a massive scale to make dissolution “necessary and unavoidable” comes from its decision to consider as relevant also what it calls “cases (b) and (c).” As mentioned earlier, these are cases of out-of-court settlements that remained confidential and were not submitted to the Tokyo District Court and cases of believers who donated under pressure but did not complain because of “psychological barriers.” Not only does the court speculate that these cases, of which it knows precious nothing, exist. It also speculates that a substantial number of them refer to donations made after the Compliance Declaration and even today.
Where is the evidence? There is none, the court admits. However, the court offers a rationale for its speculation. It argues that, independently of any numbers or evidence, the Church continues to be an organization regarded by most Japanese as operating “outside the social norms,” particularly “after 2022” when a negative “social attention… increased in the wake of the [Abe] shooting incident.” “Experts” consulted by the MEXT, particularly lawyers in the anti-Cult Network, insist that all Church believers are in “a situation where the decision-making process is directly or indirectly suppressed” (“brainwashing,” again).
As a conclusion, even if “numerical” data suggest the opposite conclusion, and the inference is based on speculation rather than evidence, the court states that “it is reasonable to think that the problematic situation continued to exist” after the Compliance Declaration and is still present today.
There has been a “considerable degree of improvement” since 2009, but the “structure” of the Church has remained unchanged. The court believes that it is this “structure,” which includes organization and beliefs, that unavoidably causes unfair solicitations to donate. Thus, the court concludes that the measures taken by the Church are not “fundamental” and “it is reasonable to conclude that the situation still exists to a degree that cannot be overlooked even now.”
How a conclusion that is contradicted by the numbers and for which no evidence has been offered may be called “reasonable” remains unexplained. To find a logic in this madness we can only refer to the anti-cult ideology according to which “cultists” are by definition “brainwashed,” so we can assume they are “victims” without the need of any statistics or evidence. In the case of the Church in Japan, however, the court does not explain why the objectionable incidents had decreased to single-digit numbers since 2019 but, for whatever reason, are at risk of growing again to a “considerable” figure now. This is a time when, if anything, the Church may be expected to be more careful than ever after the post-Abe-assassination campaigns and the new 2023 law targeting donations to religious organizations.
The ninth question the Tokyo District Court answered is whether dissolving the Unification Church would violate Constitutional principles on freedom of religion. The international obligations of Japan under the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights it has signed and ratified are never mentioned.
The court claims that dissolution is “exclusively aimed at the secular (non-religious) aspects of religious corporations and is intended solely for secular (non-religious) purposes, and is not intended to interfere with the spiritual or religious aspects of religious corporations or believers.” The dissolution “does not have the effect of preventing believers from continuing a religious group that does not have juridical personality, or from forming a new group or corporation in an appropriate manner, nor does it prevent them from performing religious acts or procuring new facilities or goods for that purpose. In other words, a dissolution order does not in itself have any legal effect that would prohibit or restrict the religious acts of believers.”
The court is aware of the immediate objection, that “when a dissolution order for a religious corporation becomes final and binding, liquidation procedures are carried out” and properties, including real estate and places of worship, are confiscated. The court admits that consequently “it is possible that the dissolution order may hinder the continuation of the religious acts being performed by the believers using the property belonging to the religious corporation.” These “problems” caused to the freedom of religious of believers, the court argues, “can be said to be a reflection of the benefits that accompanied having juridical personality.” Being “reflective,” the court believes, this collateral damage to the believers’ freedom of religion carries less weight than the need to protect the broader “public welfare” of all Japanese by dissolving the Church.
This is not what freedom of religion or belief is all about, however. International conventions, not to mention common sense, do not distinguish whether the damage to religious liberty is direct or collateral. Under international law, freedom of religion or belief can only be limited for a definitive number of reasons, of which the protection of “public welfare” or the fact that a religious minority is unpopular or accused of “suppressing the decision-making process” of “brainwashed” believers are not part.
Summing up, the decision appears to be politically motivated and to defer to the opinion of the majority, which in turn is conditioned by the media and by the anti-cult lobby that instigates the media. It states that before 2009 some believers engaged in illicit sales of artifacts for exorbitant prices, but fails to prove that they were acting on behalf of the Church. It reverses, with the recent support of the Supreme Court, decades of case law requesting criminal as opposed to civil decisions to support a decision of dissolution. It relies on settlements, rather than court decisions only, and even on mere statements and vague speculations about possible unreported cases for which there is not a single piece of evidence. It admits that incidents where donations were made under pressure decreased dramatically after the Compliance Declaration of 2009 and by the time of the Abe assassination had almost disappeared. Yet, it claims contradictorily that the Declaration has not been effective enough and abuses are still “presumably” going on based on the fact that the Church has not fundamentally changed its structure and teachings.
The latter argument, which was crucial for the dissolution, moves from the ground of evidence to an implicit indictment of the very nature and theology of the Church. Following the anti-cult vulgata, it is represented as intrinsically evil and engaged in “brainwashing” its members. By doing so, the decision moves to the prohibited ground of indicting a religious organization because of its theology and the artificially created and politically motivated hostile “social attention” that escalated to social hate after the Abe assassination.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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